Thursday, October 16, 2008

Chunk It is a new browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer. What Chunk It does is search within your search engine results for the content for which you're really trying to find. Once Chunk It is installed in your browser simply enter your search terms or phrases into the Chunk It box and Chunk It will search with the links returned by Google (or other search engines) for exact content matches. The Chunk It results are shown in a column next to your original search engine results thereby showing you the relevance of the links returned by your search engine.

The video below demonstrates how Chunk It works with the Yahoo search engine. You may also want to see the Chunk It FAQ page before installing Chunk It.

Applications for EducationChunk It could be a great time saver for students when they're searching the Internet. Chunk It can help students find the information they need in less time, in turn giving them more time for in-depth research of a topic or more time to dedicate to writing and editing.

Voicethread is one of the best technology resources for teachers available on the Internet. There is a place for Voicethread in math, science, social studies, English, foreign language, just about any content area. I've written about using Voicethread in the past and you can check out those blog posts here, here, or here.

Today, Kevin Jarrett posted links to two fantastic wikis about using Voicethread in the classroom. I encourage you to check out Kevin's blog to read what he has to say about Voicethread and the Voicethread wikis found here and here.

If you're not familiar with Voicethread, the demo below explains it far better than I ever could.

Ask About College is a service designed to answer the questions that students might have when applying to a particular college or university. Ask About College provides not only "canned" responses to general questions, it also provides unique responses to a student's unique question. Ask About College offers answers from students for students. For example if a high school student is considering attending The Ohio State University that student can find basic information about the university, but if he or she can't find an answer to a unique question they can Ask About College and get a response.

Ask About College could become a popular resource for high school students because it does offer integration with Facebook. Between the Ask About College service and the use of Facebook, students should be able to find the answer to just about any question about a particular college or university.

FotoViewr is a new service that enables users to display their image collections in a variety of 3D galleries. FotoViewr takes the images you select from your Flickr or SmugMug account and displays them in a 3D gallery. It's a simple one step process that produces a nice gallery display. Galleries created on FotoViewr can be embedded in your blog or website. I've embedded a small gallery of some of my photos taken while hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Applications for EducationFotoViewr could be useful for photography/ art teachers and students as a way to display student work online on a class blog or website. It may also be useful for teachers or students looking for a different way to display images from a field trip or special event at school.

If you're looking for video of last night's Presidential debate C-Span has posted a full length video of it on YouTube. I've embedded the video below. If you teach in a school that blocks YouTube, you may want to try one of these alternative methods for viewing online videos.